Justin Rose praises swing coach

Next week marks four years since Justin Rose first began working on his swing with Sean Foley. But in the moments after winning the U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club near Philadelphia on Sunday for his first major championship, Rose referred to Foley as more than just a swing coach.

The 32-year-old from England gave credit to Foley for improvements each year, particularly being able to hit the ball a little farther and straighter. Rose also mentioned a text Foley sent him Sunday morning before he closed with an even-par 70 for his two-stroke victory.

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“He said something along the lines of just go out there and be the man that your dad taught you to be and be the man that your kids can look up to,” Rose said. “Really, that was my goal. Today was about winning the U.S. Open, but it was also about honoring great men that have come before us.”

Rose lost his father, Ken, to leukemia in 2002.

Foley also is top-ranked Tiger Woods’ swing coach.

Of Foley, Rose said, “I would say it’s more than just a player-coach relationship. I regard him as a true friend, and I regard him as someone who if I ever had a question about golf or about life, he would be very much at the top of my list.”

Auto racing

Daytona to get a redesign

Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla., is getting a face-lift.

Three years after a repaving project, the famed track is overhauling the frontstretch to give the aging grandstands a modern look and feel.

International Speedway Corp., which owns Daytona and 12 other NASCAR tracks, estimates the redesign will cost between $375 million and $400 million.

ISC scheduled the project to begin July 5 and be completed by January 2016.

Johnson has car trouble

Ready to thrill a few hundred kids at an elementary school in his hometown of El Cajon, Calif., NASCAR superstar Jimmie Johnson hopped into a replica of his No. 48 car to fire up the engine.

The battery was dead.

An attempt to bump-start the vehicle bashed in the bumper and the show car started leaking oil.

Undaunted, Johnson jogged through the parking lot to the grass plot where the kids were gathered, chanting his name.

It was an fitting entrance, considering Johnson was at the school to check out a jogging track built with a Jimmie Johnson Foundation/Lowe’s Toolbox for Education Champions Grant.

Tennis

Venus to miss Wimbledon

After 16 consecutive years of always showing up at Wimbledon, winning five titles along the way, 33-year-old Venus Williams pulled out of the grass-court Grand Slam tournament that starts Monday because of a lower-back injury.

Serena expresses opinions

Top-ranked Serena Williams, Venus’ 31-year-old sister, said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine that, while not blaming the victim in the Steubenville, Ohio, rape case, “she shouldn’t have put herself in that position.”

The comment is made in one paragraph of a lengthy story about Williams.

Two Steubenville High football players were convicted in March of raping a drunken 16-year-old girl; each of the boys was sentenced to at least a year in a juvenile correctional facility. One must serve an additional year for photographing the girl as she was naked.

According to the Rolling Stone story, Williams says the perpetrators of the crime “did something stupid,” and she asks: “Do you think it was fair, what they got?”

She adds, “I’m not blaming the girl, but if you’re a 16-year-old and you’re drunk like that, your parents should teach you: Don’t take drinks from other people.”

And Williams also is quoted as saying: “… she shouldn’t have put herself in that position, unless they slipped her something, then that’s different.”

ELSEWHERE

• Jamaican sprinter Veronica Campbell-Brown, a three-time Olympic gold medalist, tested positive for a banned diuretic at a meet in May and will serve a suspension while anti-doping officials rule on the test.

• Julio Chavez, a defender who was captain of Chivas USA’s Under-18 soccer team, died in an auto accident Monday in Modesto, Calif.

• Injury-depleted Indiana, the defending WNBA champion, will be without starting guard Katie Douglas for several more weeks because of a bulging disk in her lower back. She already has missed four games because of the injury.

• Animal Kingdom, winner of the 2011 Kentucky Derby and this year’s $10 million Dubai World Cup, finished 11th as a 5-4 betting favorite in the Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot in England. It was the 5-year-old’s last race before retirement.

Declaration of War won the mile Group I event at 15-2 odds.

• The directors of the New York Racing Association named a lawyer without a background in horse racing, 60-year-old Christopher Kay, as NYRA’s new president and chief executive officer.